Video Game / Phantasy Star Zero

The main player classes and lead female protagonist, Sarisa. Getting Phantasy Star Online flashbacks yet?

Shortly after the release of Phantasy Star Portable on the Playstation Portable, Sega decided to not leave Nintendo DS owners out in the cold. Thus came Phantasy Star Zero (written as Ø in North America), the second game of the Phantasy Star franchise on a Nintendo handheld console. (After the Compilation Re-release of I, II and III on the GBA, of course.)

Released in late 2008 in Japan and late 2009/early 2010 for North America and Europe, Phantasy Star Zero brings back much of Phantasy Star Online's game mechanics and style (it is, after all, abbreviated PS0), with some minor improvements. Like both Phantasy Star Online and Phantasy Star Universe, it is an online Action RPG.

The story begins on a nameless planet two hundred years after a mysterious calamity known as the Great Blank, which destroyed most historical records. The modern world is now a Cattle Punk Scavenger World where the last fragments of humanity do their best to live on.

However, this peaceful life is about to change: the Ridiculously Human Robots known as CASTs have begun to awaken from the slumber imposed upon them by the Great Blank, and an enigmatic group of Human Aliens called Newmans are descending to Earth for unknown reasons. The presence of these three races begins to move the gears that have been frozen for the past two centuries, and will reveal not only the cause of the Great Blank but determine the future of the universe.

See Phantasy Star for the original tetralogy, and Phantasy Star Online or Phantasy Star Universe for the other games of the series.

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Phantasy Star Zero provides examples of:

• A God Am I: Mother Trinity. Subverted, because she's the host of Dark Falz itself.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The Japanese version of the game has a vocal theme song, but versions outside of Japan replaced it with an entirely instrumental track made to evoke The whole new world. This can make the inclusion of the entirely Japanese Taisetsu na Mono in all versions of the game strangely jarring.
• Another Side, Another Story: The main story of Zero changes significantly depending on the player character's race, complete with differing FMVs for each story.
• Art Evolution: Initially, Zero's artwork was done in the same style as PSO and PSU (example pictured above). However, shortly after its announcement, the artwork was changed to something more generic and evocative of anime styles since the Turn of the Millennium.
• As Long as There Is Evil: Mother Trinity (and Dark Falz by extension) can keep returning as long as someone wishes for them to return. As revealed by Reve, the fact that many of the newmans on the moon were raised by Mother Trinity makes it difficult for them to let go of their past, although Reve swears to destroy her as many times as needed.
• Ass Kicks You: The Funny Dive Photon Art for wands. The character using it propels themselves into the air by twirling their wand, then comes crashing down on their rear, causing a sparkly shockwave that hits enemies in an area of effect.
• Bag of Sharing: The Joint Trunk can be accessed by any character on your card.
• Big First Choice: Which species you choose to be has a big impact on the story. Perspectives are different, as are the FMVs seen. While the story ultimately ends in the same place, the path there changes depending on who you are.
• Body Surf: Zero's CASTs can do this to an extent; compared to the Androids and CASTs from other games, the head is the only critical component of their body. A CAST can swap bodies just by detaching their head and mounting it on another body.
• Boring, but Practical: HUcast or HUcaseal characters. They don't learn any techniques, and their traps are situational. In exchange for their versatility, though, they have access to all kinds of weapons, and they boast highest base-attack in the game. In addition, they slowly regain HP. Choose your implement of bodily harm, and go crazy on the attack button; repeat until either the 'Game Over' screen or the credit scene (whichever comes first).
• Bragging Rights Reward: Getting 100% Completion nets you a Heaven Element item. Heaven Element gives your weapon a chance to One-Hit Kill on contact. Some issues with this: 1. You've done literally everything in the game, so there's not much else to use it on, and 2. As with pretty much every One-Hit Kill effect in the series, it's super Awesome, but Impractical, only decently effective on the weakest of mobs where it wouldn't be necessary anyways.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Ogi makes mention of the fact that Ana is quite well-endowed for a Newman. Sarisa is not pleased.
• The Cavalry: In the Human storyline, Kai and the entirety of Dairon City's Hunter's Guild, including the Guilds of nearby cities, come to the rescue of the player's party and the newman resistance just when all seems lost. Also something of a a Gondor Calls for Aid moment, because Lindow comments that the mayor and a large number of hunters left town a chapter or two before they make their rescue.
• Camera Centering: Press L to center the camera behind you. Very useful given the otherwise highly limited camera controls.
• Cast from Hit Points: The "Risk" and "Life" Elements. Risk increases your damage but makes you take a percentage of the damage you deal as recoil, while Life takes a flat percentage of your HP every time you attack in exchange for boosting damage.
• Cast from Money: The "Celeb" Element takes away a portion of your Meseta every time you attack in exchange for a damage boost. The "Meseta" Element inverts this by draining money from enemies when you hit them.
• Cattle Punk: Androids standing side to side with cowboys from The Wild West and hunters dressed like soldiers from the American Civil War? You bet your sweet bippy.
• Chain Lightning: A charged Zonde transforms into Gizonde, shooting a bolt of lightning that jumps to nearby targets on hit. Against bosses with multiple targets, it will jump between individual parts, multiplying Gizonde's damage up to several times over.
• Charged Attack: All techs and most weapons have a hold type charge attack. For techs, charging is how you use the higher level attacks from previous games (Foie charges up to Rafoie, for example). For weapons with charge attacks, you use Photon Arts, powerful attacks that range from Awesome, but Impractical, like the Wand's Act Trick, to so useful there's almost no reason you should be using anything but the attack as long as you have the TP to use it, like the Gunblade's Earth Bullet.
• Chekhov's Gun: The ability for a CAST to Body Surf becomes an important plot point.
• Color-Coded Multiplayer: Like in PSO and PSU, Zero color-codes the speech bubbles of the party with a corresponding similarly colored icon next to their name on the second screen.
• Combat Tentacles: Octo Diablo. Who then drops one of its tentacles, which then gets turned into a Rocket Launcher.
• Dialogue Tree: Noticeably more prevalent than in other Phantasy Star games where the player makes their own protagonist; the other characters still do most of the talking, but you have many chances to give an opinion.
• Difficult, but Awesome: FOnewmearls can deal incredible damage with techniques, making them capable of soloing quite a few levels (skill permitting). However, proper use of one requires that the user master aiming the spell while controlling the camera, as well as avoid getting smashed about by enemies.
• Disaster Scavengers: Together with hunters and cable runners, these guys make up an important triad of important out-of-city occupations in Zero's society.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • Weapons and armor are Level-Locked Loot, but Mags and slot units aren't. A low-level character with a 100-power Mag (borrowed from a character in another save file or traded from another player) can utterly decimate just about everything in Story and Normal modes.
  • The Pizza Box. It's a Joke Item at first, but use 99 DiGrinders on it, and it turns into one of the strongest armors in the game. And it's equippable at level 12. Borrow one from a high-level character, and your low-level character can tank their way up to Hard Mode in no time.
• Disney Death:
  • Kai, who appears to sacrifice himself fighting off monsters in the Makara Ruins. He sets up the The Cavalry moment toward the end of the story.
  • Played strangely straight by Mother Trinity and Dark Falz. One of the post-story quests reveals that as long as newmans like Reve long for the guidance of Mother Trinity, they will keep returning over and over and over again.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Ogi of all people suffers this when he first meets Ana. Sarisa punishes him for it.
• The Drifter: After his Dark and Troubled Past, Kai became this before he settled down in Dairon City and joined the Hunter's Guild there.
• Dual Boss: Chaos and Mobius, Reve's personal combat vehicles. They combine to form Humilias.
• Earth All Along: A Double Subversion— when Zero was first announced, the game was expected to be a continuation of the Phantasy Star Online series. Then, Sega announced it would have no connection at all to any previous Phantasy Star game whatsoever ... and yet, aside from all the subtle references to PSO, the side quest "Mother's Memory" blatantly states that the "earth" of Zero is the very same Coral that was the homeworld of PSO's setting!
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Certain Techniques are more effective on certain enemies than others. There's no obvious forewarning about what is good against an enemy and what isn't besides common sense (using Zonde on robots) or any abilities the enemy might have, leading the player to Try Everything.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": To the people of Zero's contemporary society, the planet they live on is simply called "the earth" and its one moon "the moon." It wasn't always like this.
• Fairy Battle: Booma Origins et al, Rappies et al. They even have their own battle theme for each area.
• Friendly Sniper: Professional though he is, Ogi is also rather personable. Kai comments on Ogi's glibness in the Human mission "Clockworks," where Ogi doesn't seem all that bothered by the fact that Octo Diablo had just eaten his entire body save for his head just earlier. He shows the same attitude in the newman and CAST versions of said mission too. He ties with Kai for the title of 'Most Personable NPC'.
• Global Currency: Meseta. The star systems and times may change in Phantasy Star, but the money stays the same.
• God of Evil: Dark Falz. In Zero, he can manifest in the body of someone or something with enough darkness in their heart. That includes Artificial Humans.
• Guide Dang It!: Certain weapons and armors, when equipped together, will give extra stat bonuses. There is nothing in the game that tells you this. (Full list here.)
• Gun Twirling: RAmars will do this after firing a salvo from a handgun.
• Hijacked by Ganon: The fact that this is here should tell veteran Phantasy Star players that Mother Trinity isn't the True Final Boss. That's right; ol' Dark Falz makes its appearance yet again.
• Identical Grandson: The human character in a nutshell, compared to the human hero of the Great Blank. Mother Trinity takes this just about as well as you'd expect.
• Hub City: Dairon City. You will not see another city in the entire game.
• Improbable Use of a Weapon: The Rod PA "Rodeo Drive", where the user boards their Rod and starts bucking around wildly, dealing physical damage to enemies nearby.
• Kaizo Trap: When Reyburn dies, it collapses and anyone it falls on top of takes heavy damage, so don't stand too close. Also, when Humilias is beaten, one of its component parts starts chasing after the player while exploding. It is very difficult to avoid, so it's a good idea to either start spamming Resta or drop a Healing Trap.
• Kick the Dog: Mother Trinity to Reve. And it's a particularly cruel one at that. While attacking the Arca Plant, Trinity sets Reve on you to stop you from damaging her power supply. You beat him, only for her to toss him away as useless after revealing that she didn't even NEED the Arca Plant at that point. He's utterly devastated.
• Kid Hero: Sarisa doesn't seem all that old. The default HUmar looks to be about her age as well.
• Joke Item: Continuing the tradition set by PSO, Zero includes a number of joke weapons like laser cannons shaped like ice cream cones, mustard/ketchup bottle mech-guns, and pizza boomerangs. There's also homage weapons from non-Sega franchises, like the Dokan Cannon (Warp Pipe), Charge Beam (Samus' arm cannon), and Hatsune Miku's Leeke (Vocaloid). Unfortunately, those last three don't exist in non-Japanese versions of the game.
• La Résistance: Ana is the leader of the newman resistance on the moon.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Every CAST that awakens suffers from some form of this due to being forced offline before the Great Blank by Mother Trinity's Photon Noise.
• Level-Locked Loot: Weapons and armor have a minimum level requirement before they can be equipped. However, Mags and slot units do not, and there's nothing preventing a high-level character from loaning some of their top-tier units to a low-level character via the joint trunk or trading.
• Lighter and Softer: To go with the Art Shift, the story is notably a lot tamer than Phantasy Star standards, even if the threat of death still lurks around every corner out there and the story takes place After the End. Even the Great Blank caused by Mother Trinity, despite implying she basically caused a proverbial dark age after wiping out Coral's society, is depicted more as a nefarious Utopia Justifies the Means villain rather than any sort of Omnicidal Maniac, and Dark Falz borders on Giant Space Flea from Nowhere as a possessive god monster, compared to the nightmarish Eldritch Abomination nature of Dark Falz in the rest of the franchise.
• Lost Technology: Pretty much everything about the former civilization on the earth. Prior to the events of the story, the only way to recover lost science and technology was to scavenge it.
• Luck-Based Mission: To get 100% Completion, you need to complete all 15 Side Quests in the game on every difficulty. One of those Quests is a Secret Level called "Third Daughter". To unlock it in the first place, you need to find Naura's Bakery, a very rare secret room only found on two fields in the entire game and only in dead end routes. If that doesn't sound too bad, the spawn rate for the room is aggravatingly low, and you need to find Naura's Bakery again every time you want to do the Quest. Talk about your Last Lousy Points.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: The Shield weapons you can equip in the game give you a slight defense bonus, but more importantly, holding down the L Button will raise the Shield. As long as you're facing whatever is trying to attack you, the Shield will negate ALL damage and status effects for the cost of some TP (usually less than it would cost to heal yourself with Resta anyhow). If you aren't good at Rolling to avoid attacks (or even if you are, since some attacks are very difficult to roll out of safely), you'll be relying on your shield A LOT from late Normal mode onward.
• Magical Girl Warrior: Sarisa's much like this, considering that she is a soldier of the newman race ... yet often comes off like a Magical Girl in combat. That her rod looks like something right out of a Magical Girl anime only enforces this.
• Magikarp Power: The Pizza Box armor. On its own it's fairly weak, but using 99 Digrinders on it makes it stronger than anything short of the top-tier 7-star equipment. And it can be equipped as soon as level 12.
• Mana Drain: The "Heart" Element converts a portion of the damage you deal back into PP.
• Marathon Level: The Eternal Tower is easily the longest area in the game. It will literally take you hours to complete it, especially on the higher difficulties. You'll be thanking Nintendo for the DS' built-in sleep mode, since you can't save and quit in the middle of it without abandoning the entire run. And did we mention that you need to complete it at least once on Hard to unlock Super Hard offline? Or that there are many rare weapons that are only available at the tower? Have fun... Not to mention if you want to expand your inventory slots this is the only way to do so meaning you have to do it a minimum of three times to max your inventory slots per character. Luckily if you look at the bottom screen, you can sometimes skip rooms. Even still, have fun with your 8-15 hour runs...
• Mascot Mook: Cute and fluffy Rappies return in this game. Notably, this is the game that would codify their design in future games, including Phantasy Star Online 2, Phantasy Star Nova, and IDOLA: Phantasy Star Saga.
• The Mentor: Kai; if your character is human, he's the one who trained you prior to your official acceptance into the Hunter's Guild.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: This game has the first appearance in the series of "Gunblades", combination swords and handguns.
• Moon Rabbit: The newmans in this game have a distinct "rabbit" motif to their outfits — many items of headgear for player characters or NPCs have ear-like extensions, and one female PC newman hat is outright designed after a rabbit, with ears and a cottontail.
• Neuro-Vault: CAST bodies have a "sub-memory" system. If another CAST assumes control of the body, they have access to whatever was in the sub-memory.
  • Fling a Light into the Future: One of the CASTs who lived on the moon during the Great Blank pulls a form of this before he died; he committed all he knew about Mother Trinity and her actions to the sub-memory in his body, in hopes that a CAST in the future would find his body and download the knowledge.
  • Note to Self: Part of the Chekhov's Gun; Ogi finds out exactly what happened during the Great Blank. He. Is. Pissed.
  • Ooh Me Accent's Slipping: Ogi has a brief case of this when he assumes control of a CAST body in Paru ... and develops a Texan-esque accent. It takes him some effort to get back to his usual voice.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The music theme that plays whenever a "nest" of Ridiculously Cute Critters is encountered is titled "Rappy Fever," which was also the name for the jackpot used by Casino Voloyal slot machines in PSU.
  • One of the battle themes for the Eternal Tower contains the opening beat of Olga Flow's first form theme from PSO slowed down.
  • The Kaizo Trap that occurs if someone happens to let the dying Reyburn fall on them is a Shout-Out to PSO's Dragon boss(es).
  • Booma Origin and Gigobooma Origin monsters... enough said.
  • There are several callbacks to Phantasy Star IV:
    • Per tradition, the Psycho Wand appears as the Infinity +1 Sword for Rods.
    • The Final Boss also drops Rika's Suit, a Newearl-exclusive armor, as a Rare Random Drop on the highest difficulty.
    • The infamous Naura Bakery reappears as a random event in either the Gurhacia Valley or the Ozette Wetlands.
• Never Trust a Hair Tonic: The concoctions Mayor Dairon tries may or may not be effective, but they certainly stink to high heaven.
• Nominal Importance: In an odd twist, the only people who don't seem to get names in Zero are people you only meet briefly in quests, as well as those who work the Hunter's Guild mission counter and storage bank. Other NPCs will eventually give you their name, if not outright.
  • You'll also notice, both here in this article and in the game, that "earth" and "moon" are never capitalized...
• O.C. Stand-in: The default HUmar (he's the kid with the red jacket standing above the logo in the example image above) is set up as this in the opening FMV; he stands in for the player's character.
• The Pioneer: Kai happened to be this in his childhood. He related his Dark and Troubled Past in the form of an unrelated story to the player character and Sarisa. Only Ogi realizes that Kai was talking about himself. Something of an informed stupidity moment on the part of the player character though, as many players cottoned on very quickly indeed.
• Phenotype Stereotype: Among the Human characters, Zero doesn't allow the player to choose a custom eye and hair color combination. You're stuck with either blond hair/blue eyes, red hair/green eyes, or black hair/brown eyes. Granted, you can mix and match these with different skin tones...
• Punny Name: The mayor's well-endowed CAST secretary is named "Ms. Lindow."
• Red Herring: There are hints that the game takes place on Earth as referenced in Phantasy Star II. It does take place on a previously-unseen homeworld significant to the Phantasy Star series, but it's the one from Phantasy Star Online — which is also hinted.
• Relationship Values: The choices you make during conversations and cutscenes affect what your True Companions and other characters think of you. Mostly, this affects who talks to you and what they say after the main story finishes.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: CASTs, though perhaps less human than the ones in Universe.
• Robot Girl: RAcaseals and HUcaseals, as with PSO.
• Ruins of the Modern Age: Paru ("Oblivion City").
• Schizo Tech: A recovering human/CAST civilization on the earth with scraps of Lost Technology, and newmans on the moon who never lost that technology and in fact improved upon it.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Finjers of Arca Plant are clearly miniaturized Nirvashes.
  • The default model for the HUmarl character resembles Hibiki Ganaha.
  • If you're careful, you can locate and wield Selvaria's spear and shield.
  • In the Japanesse Version you can purchase the a weapon called an Power Beam.
  • One of the wands obtainable in the game is a book, named Al Azif - the original name of the Necronomicon.
• Squishy Wizard: FOnewearls, as per the norm. They are easily the most frail characters in the game, with extremely low base HP and paper-thin defenses, but make up for it with the best MST stat and the ability to fight at long range.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Phantasy Star Zero's name. If abbreviated to PS0, it can be hard to distinguish it from PSO. Keep that in mind. Compare the example image on this article with the one on Phantasy Star Online. Notice that everyone in the Zero artwork is grouped the same way as in the PSO picture. ^ExamplesZero's HUmar and Ash (PSO's HUmar); Zero's RAcast and Gilliam (PSO's RAcast); Zero's RAcaseal and Elanor (PSO's RAcaseal) (and they even look similar); Zero's FOnewearl and Rupika (PSO's FOnewearl); Zero's FOmarl and Alicia (PSO's FOmarl); Zero's RAmar and RAmarl and Bernie (PSO's RAmar); Zero's HUcast and HUcaseal and Kireek (PSO's HUcast); Sarisa and Sue (PSO's HUnewearl)
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Gunblades, a broadsword with a built in handgun (or rifle) for those times when you just can't get close enough to hack and slash. Kai's favorite weapon type.
• Tomato in the Mirror: One of the missions reveals that the Newmans were completely wiped out in the war against Mother Trinity centuries ago. All of the current Newmans are descended from clones of the original Newmans that Mother Trinity created to serve her.
• Transformation Sequence: When Ogi gets himself a new body on the moon, he really likes it.
• Transforming Mecha: Humilias, made of the Dual Boss Chaos and Mobius.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Newman characters lose their memory at the start of the game during the crash landing on earth. They spend most of the game struggling along with Sarisa in their decision to defy the newmans, but it turns out you were part of a newman resistance all along when you were on the moon. At least it kept you from spilling the beans. It's later revealed that you're the clone of the newman hero of yore whose power Mother Trinity wanted to utilize for her own ends, and you turned out like the original after all. She literally bugs out over this one.
• Turns Red: Reyburn does this, both tropewise and literally.
  • Mother Trinity has a less colorful but more dramatic transformation into 'Pissy Boss' mode: she smashes her body against the platform you're fighting on, cracking her golden visage and revealing the machinery within.
  • The plotline battle with Humilias counts, considering that it's a much, MUCH meaner version of Chaos and Moebius.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: The whole reason Mother Trinity went to war against the rest of the earth's society; she went into despair from the constant rejection of suggestions and plans she offered to the world leadership on how to repair the planetary environment. Dark Falz manifested in her, corrupting her mind, thus leading her to conclude that something needed to be done ... with force.
• Variable Mix:
  • Another PSO feature brought back for Zero, with two additional variations for rare enemy battles and encounters with Ridiculously Cute Critters.
  • The music that plays in Dairon City changes subtly depending on the race of your character.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Dark Shrine. And a surprisingly attractive one at that.
• Villainous Breakdown: Happens to Mother Trinity for different reasons based on your race. For Humans and Newmans, it essentially comes from being related in some fashion to powerful heroes that fought against her before. For CASTs, the fact that your character is the same badass that fought her in the past, now returned after regaining your combat abilities (meaning her Photon Noise failed to affect you as extensively as it should have), is what causes her to breakdown.
• We Help the Helpless: Dairon City's Hunter's Guild does this as an official city service—the mayor is also the city's guild master.
• With This Herring: The CAST character's storyline essentially boils down to this. A grand hero before the Great Blank, you tear up Mother Trinity's shit like nothing else until she bails to Arca and Photon Noises Coral. Due to the aforementioned, you are forced to shut down to avoid a literal BSOD. Waking up in the present day, you show all the aftereffects of Photon Noise exposure and have to reprogram your combat skills from scratch. Mother Trinity is none too happy to find any of this out.

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